


A Conversation in Quiet

by misha906 (BoopPhysics)



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2020-03-01 00:32:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18789376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BoopPhysics/pseuds/misha906
Summary: Hannah has a talk with her friend.





	A Conversation in Quiet

Quiet. Colin was quiet.

That in itself was nothing new; Colin was always quiet. The man came and went and fought and lived in quiet. His words were spent carefully, like a merchant counting out their gold. Outbursts constrained and dialogue sparse, to cultivate his image of a defender and a hero. Any other person in the city looking at Colin right now would see nothing more than the stoic and stalwart Armsmaster, resplendent in his regalia, sitting at attention. The Bulwark of the Bay.

Hannah knew better.

She ought to, having served alongside him for seven long years, most of which were spent as his number two. She’d learned early on how to translate his quiet into orders and conversation, how a two word response would indicate joy or a singular vowel would tell of irritation, and on occasion would be able to cajole an entire sentence out of him. This quiet was not an unfamiliar one. She’d seen it many a time, and was intimately familiar with how it roiled and itched the air, how the corners of Colin’s lips bent ever so slightly downwards. The quiet of anger and fury.

“Preliminary reports coming in tell us that about thirty percent of the city is unsalvageable at this time. Search and rescue teams are continuing. Most out of town Protectorate and Ward teams have pulled out, so we’ll have to rely on our own infrastructure starting next week. Thankfully, we still have full National Guard and Red Cross aid, as well as New Wave.”

Hannah let the silence hang in the air, trying to use Colin’s language to attract a response. He looked almost comical in the small office chair, the scarred and dented armor dwarfing the seat.

“Why are you here, Hannah?” He gave one.

“You are the leader of the Protectorate, you must be kept apprised of the situation,” Hannah replied.

The quiet in the air shifted. “Apparently my team takes their leader for a fool.”

“Sir?”

“Why are you here, Hannah? Besides to be my jailer for the hour.”

Hannah sighed and removed her mask, wrapping the bandana tight around an arm.

“Why?” A simple question. A direct question. One whose efficiency Colin could appreciate. More could be said, but it was unnecessary; the one word carried multitudes. The quiet in the room stretched and swirled for many long moments as Colin searched for his answer.

“It was a tactical decision.” A lie served as his first.

Hannah called his bluff. “It was attempted murder.”

“They were villains.” A genuine answer, and true.

She responded with her own. “They were helping in the fight.”

“What I did, I did for the betterment of humanity.”

“What you did was reckless endangerment of our allies, a violation of the truce, and a multitude of offenses besides.”

“If I had succeeded, we could have killed one of them!” Colin’s armor creaked as he stood, teeth bared in anger.

“Are you so sure of that?” Hannah asked.

“Yes!” Colin snarled.

“That you would succeed where others failed for decades? That you would succeed where the combined might of the Protectorate could not, where Scion could not? Can you tell me you were absolutely sure of that, Colin?”

Colin did not respond. Hannah felt the quiet in the air shift again, the rage sharpening and pointing itself at her. There was a time where she would take this quiet to bow out, to not let anger get the better of both of them so that they could both return to the discussion clear-headed. This was not one of those times. Her friend had made a mistake, and she needed to make sure he saw it, lest he make it again.

“What you did,” she began, “was unacceptable, Colin. You need to understand that.”

“No one would be saying that if I had succeeded.”

“I would.”

The anger lessened, the pointed dagger in the air slowly replaced by tepid inquisition.

“You would place the lives of a few villains over killing an Endbringer?” Colin asked, a hint of incredulity tinting his voice.

“It doesn’t matter if they were villains, it is about the fact that we are supposed to uphold the law, the fact that you broke an international truce that every country, every hero, and every villain agree on, Colin.”

“Natural disasters do not care about the law.”

“Are we natural disasters or are we heroes?”

Silence. For several moments there was naught but the sound of heavy breathing and the creaking of a flimsy office chair. Hannah unwound her bandana from her hand and wrapped it around the other. She felt her power, itching at the argument and needing to change forms, the dark green bolt sliding and slithering across her body. She let it, weapons forming and melting soundlessly around her various holsters while she waited for Colin’s response.

“What I did,” he began, “could have saved lives. Millions of lives. We would never have had to see a Newfoundland, a Kyushu, or a San Francisco ever again. No more cities drowned underneath waves, no more good men and women fed into that monster.”

“And let’s say you did. That by some miracle you managed to kill Leviathan. And then what? Would you do the same the next time Behemoth emerges? When the Simurgh descends?”

“No, they would require different strategies, I would need to examine them—”

“For God’s sake, Colin, that’s not what I’m talking about.” Hannah stood, turning to walk and look out the small window of the office. All she could see was water. Water everywhere. A thick deluge of mottled green-grey that swamped over almost every street and frothed around every building. The city was in ruins, skyscrapers toppled and houses obliterated, lives demolished and lost. Testaments to the power of the Endbringer.

“There are precedents to keep,” she continued, “promises to honor, laws to uphold. We do not abandon them because you had an idea, we do not commit murder on a battlefield, we are better than that. We have to be better than that.”

“A few deaths that could have saved countless more.”

Hannah sighed. This wasn’t working. She tore her eyes away from the wreckage outside and returned to her seat.

“One last question then,” she said. “What would you have done if there were no villains near where Leviathan ended up? If you didn’t have someone like Skitter, or Kaiser, or Genesis in the area, if it was someone like me, or Triumph, or Battery. Would you have gone through with your plan? Would you have disabled our armbands? Left us to die in the face of Leviathan so you could have your fight?”

Colin did not respond. Hannah did not need him to. The quiet told enough.


End file.
